Mission: Earth "Black Genesis" (26 page)

He got out a spin brush, filled its fluid container and washed his teeth and I was so bitter about the suitcases that I almost passed over a real Code break. That spin brush might even have a Voltarian manufacturing plate on it! Not that anybody on this planet could read it, but it was still a Code break. His obsession with cleanliness was going to ruin him yet. I didn't even own a spin brush: they cost three credits.

With suitcases dragging from each hand and the carry-all under one arm and the mass of newspapers under the other, he went down to his car.

And did he carefully inspect it to see if it had been set up with bombs? No! He just put his baggage in the back, the newspapers in the front seat, started up and started off. I had turned the volume down in case there was an explosion.

He went up to U.S. 495 and, tooling along comfortably, got onto U.S. 95 and, at a leisurely fifty-five, rolled across the beautiful leafy green of Maryland, admiring the trees and fields and not even glancing into the rear-view mirror to see if he was tailed. That beauty he was impressed by was deceptive. I knew there was death waiting on that road!

He got into Delaware, admiring it down to the last huge barn. I didn't know why he was looking so thoroughly at all these chicken factories with their huge signs. Snipers wouldn't be concealed in them. Then suddenly a truck—glaringly labelled Delaware Chickens Corp. —swerved around to get ahead of him (he was dawdling), and he drove up so close to it he almost rammed it and then hung hard on its tailgate. It was a truck full of live chickens and he was looking them all over.

"So," he muttered, "that's what a chicken is!"

Hopeless! Absolutely hopeless!

Past Greater Wilmington Airport, he turned to the right onto the huge Delaware River Bridge. But was his mind on his business? No!

He stopped his car! Halfway across the span, disregarding traffic and horns and brake squeals, he stepped on his brakes!

A trailer-truck slued sideways frantically and blocked all lanes!

He got out. He left his car right there in the right lane, motor running, and got out! He gave only the slightest glance to the pandemonium he had abruptly caused.

He went over to the bridge rail and looked down at the Delaware River.

"Holy, jumping blastguns!" he said in Voltarian. Just like that!

And what was he looking at? He was looking down at the brown, roiling water. And what was there to see? Nothing but oil slicks and old floating tires and dead cats. Of course, I will admit the Delaware River is pretty big as rivers go and it looks bigger as at this point it becomes Delaware Bay and then part of the Atlantic.

The huge truck driver that had almost rammed the Cadillac now couldn't get out because of the stacked up traffic. He came roaring at Heller, shaking his fists. I only saw him on peripheral vision. Heller wasn't looking at him. He was looking northeast, up the river. The noise was absolutely deafening. Honking horns and angry yells and this truck driver. I had to turn down the gain.

Heller ignored the raised fists and profanity coming at him. Right into the middle of a tirade about "you (bleeped) kid," Heller said, "Is there a city up there?"

"Jesus!" exploded the truck driver. "Where the hell are you from?"

And Heller was so intent on whatever he was thinking about, he said, "Manco."

Then, into the middle of an "I don't care if you're from hell" sort of thing, Heller said, "I asked you, is there a city up this river?" Yikes! It was his piercing, high-pitched Fleet voice! I hastily lowered the gain some more.

The truck driver said, "Philadelphia, you (bleeped), ignorant..."

And into the middle of that, Heller pierced, "Is this their sewer?"

"Of course it's their God (bleeped) sewer!" screamed the enraged truck driver.

"Jesus," said Heller in English. And he just ignored the man and the crowd and the fists and went back and got in his car and drove on.

Heller was shaking his head. "Must be a hundred million people in that town and no sewer system. POH-LLU-SHUN! Jesus!"

As I say, he wasn't tending to business. Any passing sniper could have shot him.

But I had him now. He had actually told an Earth-man where he was actually from! I started to write it down and then thought I had better reread Code Number a-36-544 M Section B. I dimly remembered it could be interpreted as "making an alien aware that a landing had taken place on his planet." I couldn't be sure. Had the truck driver been aware of Heller's definitive answer? I couldn't find the book.

When I sat down to watch again, Heller was on the New Jersey Turnpike, tooling along at fifty-five. He was relaxed once more. He had all his windows up and the air conditioning on, so it must be a hot day.

The traffic was very jammy. This turnpike is one of the most overloaded highways in the world, carrying almost triple what it was designed for and despite the high price of gasoline and cars and consequent traffic reduction, the trucks were clogging its dozen lanes. Oranges from Florida seemed to be the biggest part of what Heller was trying to flow along with.

He drove for some time and then, possibly because he thought oranges might have an odor—a trailer had evidently been strewing the road with them after a collision —he opened his window.

He sniffed.

Suddenly he shook his head as though to clear it.

He sniffed again.

Then he sneezed!

Well, of course he sneezed. The state of New Jersey, particularly along the turnpike, has one of the highest air pollution concentrations in the world. I could have told him that. Everybody knows it.

Trucks or no trucks, he fished out a notebook and wrote some percentages of sulphur dioxide and some other symbols I don't know, but probably all noxious.

He closed his window. And then he said to the planet in general, "You're going to have to use hacksaws pretty soon even to get a plane to move through this stuff! How can you manage to do it so fast? This area is .06 percent up even since my survey."

He drove for a while and then he said, "I better get busy."

But it was miles later before he acted. And what he did made no sense at all.

He went through the lousiest tail-shaking procedure I have ever seen!

Somehow he had gotten ahead of the mobs of Florida oranges. Before him lay miles of two lanes, totally empty. It was completely flat—there is no scenery on this turnpike—it was without turns.

Despite the solemn warnings of Stupewitz and Maul-in, he suddenly tramped on the accelerator and zipped the car up to ninety miles an hour! I thought, at last he's gotten some sense! He's trying to get away!

It wasn't as fast as he could go. If he was trying to escape, he really should have stamped on it!

He sailed along, looking in his rearview mirror.

He was in plain view! This was no way to escape!

He clocked off three miles.

Then, still in full view, almost as if he wanted to be seen, he paid a toll and drove out through an exit gate.

He stopped. He backed the car over to the side where it could not be seen. And he just sat and watched the gate.

After a bit, he got one of the newspapers and began to read, looking up from time to time at the gate.

He found one story that fascinated him. It was in the New York Daily Scum:

REVERED REPORTER RUBBED

MUCKY HACK DOES HIS LAST SPREAD

Mucky Hack, veteran investigative reporter and crime exposer of the Daily Libel, was splattered all over 34th Street last night when his specially built Mercedes-Benz Phaeton was rigged for a blitz that went BOOM!

The car was worth $89,000 according to

Boyd's, the only underwriters who would touch it. It was alleged to be a gift from I. G. Barben Pharmaceutical Corp. Car fans will miss its presence in the Annual Special Car Parade at Atlantic City.

Five shops were also destroyed in the blast.

Police Inspector Bulldog Grafferty, who investigated the car bombing, issued a carefully prepared statement today: "It was a valuable vehicle. The bomb rigging was extremely expert, the work of a master. Boyd's had required the car to be guarded by Tilt and five other independent alarm systems.

"The only possible person who could have set up the blast is Bang-Bang Rimbombo.

"Bang-Bang is an ex-marine demolitions expert left over from the last war.

"Many car bombings have been attributed to him in the past although no arrests were ever made.

"Bang-Bang is a trusted member of the notorious Corleone mob which Mucky Hack has always been exposing in his tireless reporting.

"The New York/New Jersey mob is run by the able and charming Babe Corleone, the ex of the late 'Holy Joe' Corleone.

"It is well known that Corleone received his gang cognomen of 'Holy Joe' because he would not push drugs and that Faustino 'The Noose' Narcotici has been making steady inroads on the former Corleone territories in Manhattan.

"Thus, the motive for the rigging of the bombs by Bang-Bang exists. The expertise bears the unmistakable Bang-Bang trademark.

"Bang-Bang has not been arrested solely because he doesn't complete his current sentence in Sing Sing until tomorrow and was still in jail at the time of the bombing.

"Several shopkeepers were arrested for permitting the car to park in that spot.

"The case, therefore, can be considered closed."

Mucky Hack is survived by his managing editor and an old Ford.

For the life of me I could not see what he could find of interest in this story. He could read so fast that to see him sit there looking at one news item for ten minutes was baffling.

Possibly my annoyance, however, to be honest, came

from the fact that he was holding the paper folded. There was a Bugs Bunny strip that was thus only half-revealed: Bugs had Elmer Fudd in a bath of carrot juice, and not being able to see the beginning of the strip, I could not fathom how Elmer had gotten there or why. Possibly Elmer had been ill? Possibly the bath had been prepared by Elmer as a trap into which he himself had then fallen? But there was no way for me to tell Heller to open up the page so I could see. It was frustrating!

Finally Heller looked at his watch. My Gods, he was wearing a combat engineer's watch! In plain sight! I certainly put that down as a Code break. Then I was given pause: it looks like just a flat disc with a small hole in the center. Earthmen would mistake it for an identification bracelet or something like that.

He rotated his wrist, turning the watch downward and touched it. I had noticed before that he had this as a sort of nervous habit. But this is the first time I had really remarked it. It showed that he did have nerves after all.

He yawned—another nervous symptom. He looked at the toll gate area. Not one car had come through it in all the time he had been sitting there!

"So," he said, "no Slinkerton!"

Then it came to me in a flash what he had been up to. The Fleet must have battle tactics and he was practicing one of them. He had invited pursuit to lay an ambush. But he had no weapon, so he had probably done it because of training conditioning triggered by mounting nervous tension.

That must have been it, for he now started up the Cadillac, doubtlessly disappointed that his ruse had not worked, drove through the complexity of exits and entrances to the turnpike, got another fare ticket and was shortly on his way, rolling once more northeastward.

The traffic was quite heavy, and with all those trucks weaving in and out trying to pass each other, any normal driver would have felt he had his hands full. But Heller was taking time out now and then to read a story about "Economic Chaos Just Down the Road According to Financial Experts of Merrill Bull, Inc."

This expert watching him knew that the chaos which was down his road was not only economic! The lamb to slaughter had a better chance, in my opinion, than this idiot!

At 4:20 that afternoon, Heller arrived at the rendezvous. He had dawdled along, stopping often, but he was still ten minutes early.

He parked the Cadillac carelessly in the higgledy-piggledy lot and made his way through the turmoil of tired kids and savage fathers and mothers that usually populate such temporary stop areas on a turnpike.

He made his way into the restaurant and was shortly seated at a table. He looked around.

I froze! Directly across the room from him was a dimly familiar face. Heller's glance passed over it but not mine! I mastered my nerves and, using the second screen, got back to that view, stilled.

The face was very Sicilian in bone structure. It was deeply pockmarked. A knife scar ran from the corner of the mouth straight back to the bottom of the left ear. The eyes were reptilian. My memory for faces is unsurpassed. But I could not place him.

Hastily, I yanked a camera from a shelf and, excluding the edges of the screen, got a close-up of that face! Rapidly, I stripped out the finished picture and, working very fast, blew it down onto Earth-type paper.

Keeping an eye on the current screen, I saw a tall, gray-haired man walk up to the Sicilian. The Sicilian showed the gray-haired man something he held cupped in his palm. A photo? Then he nodded almost imperceptibly toward Heller.

The Sicilian was acting as the finger man!

The gray-haired man drew back and idled against the wall. He was wearing a bowler. He was impeccably dressed, a three-piece suit, the vest of which was gray. He was wearing pince-nez glasses connected to his lapel with a black ribbon. He was also carrying an umbrella.

Heller ordered, got and ate a hamburger and washed it down with Seven Up. He was picking up his check when the gray-haired man approached him.

With a touch of a finger to his bowler, the gray-haired man said, "I am Buttlesby, young master. Mr. Bury wanted to be sure you were safely met. I am to show you where to go. If you are ready, may we go?" Very courteous English accent, the perfect fake family retainer.